What's better than dinner and a movie? With Hollywood Bites, Sasha Perl-Raver brings you film and food reviews, entertainment reports, celebrity interviews and all the tastiest bites along the way.

Wednesday, March 31, 2010

The Surly Goat: Gilding is so 2005

Certain locations in Hollywood just seem cursed. Charcoal became Boho which will undoubtedly soon be something else, while its neighbor, Club Sushi, couldn’t seem to get or stay open. Red Pearl Kitchen on Melrose has already been through numerous iterations and will become Red Onion in March under the watchful eye of celebrity chef Rick Bayless. Similarly, 7929 Santa Monica Boulevard has seemingly been a revolving door of high end lounges.

After multiple nightclubs (24K, iCandy, Seven) tried and failed, Verdugo co-owners Ryan Sweeney and Brandon Bradford partnered with Adolfo Suaya (Osaka, the aforementioned Boho) and Alen Aivazian, to create a new concept. Apparently someone finally realized that, in a recession, you have to cater to the needs of the people. That means bringing the gaudy level down a few hundred notches and recognizing that bottle service, a practice which promised nobodies entre into the hottest hot spots at the peak of our indulgence a few years ago, needs to go the way of the brick cell phone.

Nowadays, people want happy hour prices, simple easy menus and an enjoyable evening that doesn’t require six months of payments to your Visa bill. With that in mind, drum roll please, may we introduce The Surly Goat, a beer bar, where bottle service has been replaced with a gentler, easier kind of bar scene. Think wine bar but yeastier and more relaxed.

The Surly Goat (not to be confused with The Lazy Ox which recently opened in Downtown) aims to be a homey, neighborhood pub with an extensive selection of obscure craft beers and none of the tacky gold spray paint and mirrored tiles 24K’s owners left behind. There are 27 beers on tap, ranging from $5-9, one to two cask engines and another 100 750ml bottles ($14-50), along with exclusive beers, like San Francisco brewery Speakeasy’s Public Enemy Pilsner, an peanut-tinged heritage beer that dates to the pre-Prohibition era, which will only be available at The Surly Goat and Verdugo.

If that doesn’t lift the curse of 7929 Santa Monica Blvd, nothing will.

Word to the wise, except a limited menu, perhaps just a few cheeses and chocolates, but that’s part of the fun at a bar whose name comes from the German word, “bock,” which means both billy goat and a lager so strong it can knock you on your ass like a billy goat.